What are you working on at the moment?

[Slim]

So as discussed elsewhere, if you're working on something or practicing something in particular, please tell us about it here!

From my point of view perhaps this thread will encourage me to practice a bit more.

At the moment I'm working on diminished scale stuff over dominant / altered 7ths. I have a backing track which is a loop of the first few bars of Larry Carlton's (It Was) Only Yesterday - there are a couple of places in that where you can play the diminished scale.

One really nice hack is that there are a number of major triads consisting of the diminished scale notes and if you deploy those in the right place, you get a lovely sophisticated, modern sound.

May post a video in a few days if I can get a bit more fluent with it.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Good luck! I wish I'd used a plectrum before now. It feels alien to me. People I've jammed with in the past have always commented on my unusual technique even with bass guitar. I sometimes pick in the traditional finger style, but intersperse this with a plectrum style action using the reverse of my index finger almost as if I'm holding an invisible pick. Unconventional and probably not conducive to progress as a player of either instrument. Still, stuck with it now and it's the way I enjoy playing.

[Slim]

Years ago I used to keep a Tele next to my desk and pick it up randomly and just out of laziness I started playing with my thumb. It does sound nice for jazz, in fact Wes Montgomery always played with his thumb so I'm in good company there. But I got out of the habit of playing with a pick, to the extent that I found playing with one to be a bit awkward.

However, playing with a thumb is limiting. You can't upstroke with a thumb, or at least I can't. So one good thing about playing with a thumb is that it brought my legato technique on a bit, to compensate for not using upstrokes.

This last few months though I've managed to train myself to play with a pick again. Except for chords, I have to use a thumb for those.

[Slim]

This is what I'm working on at the moment, improvising over the old Bossa standard Corcovado. You can't just go for it .. you have to think about which scales to play over which sections of the tune and I'm variously using A Dorian, A natural minor, D natural minor, the diminished scale and a couple of others.

For some reason I always find it easier to think in minor scales than major so if a tune calls for the C Major scale in parts, as this one does, I'll just think A Minor (which - as any fule kno - consists of the same notes).

Sorry the guitar is a bit distorted, I'm using a very simple recording setup involving sending the output from Audacity to a Boss effects unit then recording the combined signal over USB using a webcam capture application. Works well enough usually but needs a bit more care than I applied here.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Very nice. Sorry, I hadn't spotted this before tonight. This kind of music always reminds me of a lounge bar I occasionally used to visit on a Sunday night for a meal or a quiet drink. A trio, I think, would be squeezed into a tiny corner and I could only watch them play as I stood at the bar. I wish I had taken a more patient approach to music when younger, getting to grips with the basics rather than just fumbling around the fretboard until I got close enough to satisfy my ear. I quite like the throaty tone as it breaks up slightly. I'd be interested to hear that style of playing in a higher gain setting. Might be a revelation.

[Matt2112]

I'm going to be doing some solo acoustic gigs this year (and may add a percussionist for some/all of them) so have started upping the practise regime.

Today I was working on an arpeggio for the intro to Wasted Years (which is in Em with the droned open E); I've seen it done on acoustic by the nut, so an octave lower than Maiden's original version - nothing wrong with that.

But I wanted to see if I could figure it out in the octave it "should" be and found if I fretted a standard C chord shape but with the first finger  on the B string's 8th fret, then I had an Em chord* to work from, i.e.

0 (E)
8 (G)
0 (G)
9 (B)
10 (G)
0 (E)

That left my pinkie to fret the distinctive notes of the arpeggio (albeit I was doing this on the kid's small guitar at the time - and my slight affliction of my right hand didn't help - so it wasn't terribly clean).

But I got the finger movement pretty much down for the initial sequence over the Em, so now I need to figure out how to do it over D major and C major (I know!: Em-D-C in a Maiden song! How very unusual!).

I do need to pull my gigging acoustic guitar out of its case though and use that.  Let's see how it goes.

* My acoustic is actually tuned to Eb standard.

[Slim]

I'm trying to introduce Coltrane changes into my improvising. A bit mindbending at the moment. I can play fast enough, but I can't think fast enough.

If you can get it right though, it sounds off-the-scale hip.

What are Coltrane changes? Well .. no never mind

[Thenop]

I'm trying to introduce Coltrane changes into my improvising. A bit mindbending at the moment. I can play fast enough, but I can't think fast enough.

If you can get it right though, it sounds off-the-scale hip.

What are Coltrane changes? Well .. no never mind

"I start in the middle of a sentence and move in both directions at once." - John Coltrane

Good luck!

[Matt2112]

I'm going to be doing some solo acoustic gigs this year (and may add a percussionist for some/all of them) so have started upping the practise regime.

Today I was working on an arpeggio for the intro to Wasted Years (which is in Em with the droned open E); I've seen it done on acoustic by the nut, so an octave lower than Maiden's original version - nothing wrong with that.

But I wanted to see if I could figure it out in the octave it "should" be and found if I fretted a standard C chord shape but with the first finger  on the B string's 8th fret, then I had an Em chord* to work from, i.e.

0 (E)
8 (G)
0 (G)
9 (B)
10 (G)
0 (E)

That left my pinkie to fret the distinctive notes of the arpeggio (albeit I was doing this on the kid's small guitar at the time - and my slight affliction of my right hand didn't help - so it wasn't terribly clean).
———————-
I do need to pull my gigging acoustic guitar out of its case though and use that.  Let's see how it goes.

This actually didn't go anywhere near as well as I thought it would - I underestimated the difference in the sizes between the kid's guitar and my APX and the fingering was impossible for a smooth and clean arpeggio; the tension caused by the stretching hampered the movements too much.

So for "gig-friendly" purposes for now, I've settled on just using pull-offs on the top E, like how it's originally performed, but getting the open G and B strings to ring in tandem to fill it out.

[Thenop]

Was asked by one of the guitar players in my old band whether I wanted to help out doing a one off gig later this year for his (even older) band. So listening to demos recorded 35 years ago and figuring out the parts.

[Thenop]

Next to the above, also putting some time into traditional metal covers, covering Breaking the Law (a LOT fster payed than you'd think!), Accept-  Restless and Wild and Loudness - Crazy Doctor (which is really difficult to master, that tempo is killing! Plus the guitarist wants to kill me for picking that one, the solo is near impossible to do :-)). Fun times.

Ah yes, also this:

Used a fun app that mutes drums (or any instrument you want to). Don't judge to harsh, I had no monitor, just going off the speakers behind (!) me and the guitar player in front of me.

[Slim]

I'm working on a tune I attempted a few months ago but never came up with a satisfactory improv for, the lovely old Mancini tune Days of Wine and Roses. I'll post a video in a few days.

Interestingly I play in a noticeably different style if I use my semi-acoustic Epi than if I play it on a Strat or a Tele.

[Slim]

lonegroover · Dm7 Jam

Just posted this as a test of embedding Soundcloud clips, but it's an improv I did over a backing track in February. I was trying to crowbar in a bit of diminished scale outside goodness, like Mike Stern.

[Matt2112]

Working on a solo acoustic version of Extreme's More Than Words with a view to performing it at gigs.

I learnt it to a kind of campfire standard many years ago, but now I want the finger-pluck-kuckle-hit technique that's distinctive of the song down to the point it's pretty much automatic, as well as ensuring I'm hitting the right walking bass notes with my thumb.

I'm not far off that (I need to remember to moderate the tempo though), so I can concentrate more on remembering the meandering chord progression (pretty much nailed) and, even more so, on my vocal performance; I listened to the song so much back in the day that the lyrics have been seared into my memory, but singing them requires some nuance, which is what needs the most work.

I'm going to road test it at a regular nearby open mic night tomorrow, ahead of a gig at my local toward the end of this month - where the goodwill I have there might have to come in handy!

[Thenop]

Working on a solo acoustic version of Extreme's More Than Words with a view to performing it at gigs.

Popular song when we played a lot with the band in the 90s. We did it as well, the boys were front of the stage and since I did not do vocals (never felt the need) it gave me a short break in the set. For that alone it's a great song if you're a drummer 

Good luck mastering it!